patrick.net

Not a beacon, I'm talking about S&R Satellite.
not everyone has a beacon up their keister when a 700 foot ship breaks in two when it's two ends end up on top of hundred foot swells, then the middle sags and breaks

Satellites are in space, and in orbit. They lack the propellant to jet around and hover over a vessel in distress, lowering Power Bars and blankets.

You can't "dispatch" a satellite anywhere. They're still heavily under the influence of Earth's gravity - at low orbit it's still almost 1G. Satellites only carry propellant for station keeping (minor adjustments in trajectory/speed to compensate for the effects of solar wind or friction with minute numbers of atmospheric particles from Earth). Rockets capable of substantially altering a satellite's orbit require hundreds of pounds of propellant per squirt. Satellites capable of multiple massive orbit corrections, each requiring changes in velocity ov over a thousand miles per hour, are beyond current technology.

There is a myth that once you're in space, you can just fly wherever you like because there's no gravity. No: you can fly wherever you like, as long as it's along your current orbit or you have a buttload of propellant to fire.

Think about the 3rd stage of a Saturn V rocket stack. It's the smallest (a relative term) stage, with "only" 1000KN (about 2.2 million pounds) of thrust.
It carried 229,000 lb of propellant, most of which was used for the 5-minute translunar injection (TLI) burn. TLI burn begins when the spacecraft is already in orbit, putatively free of the bonds of gravity. If we could just go anywhere in space without massive energy expenditure, engines wouldn't be needed just to accelerate the command and lunar modules at around 1G for 5 minutes.

Tenpoundbass says

not everyone has a beacon up their keister

How do you propose to locate them w/o beacons in their asses (or latest Breitling watches on their wrists)?

Ironman says

As soon as the EPIRB's hit water, they automatically start transmitting their position to the satellites.... the crew doesn't have to do anything...

What more do you want?

Did you read what I said my BIL said?

When you're in the water in that kind of rough seas. The ship has to sink 100 feet before the life ring and other emergency equiptment comes to the top.
By that time a huge swell with a 60 foot cap and 100 yards between crests, can pick you up and dump some 300 foot away. You're then separated by huge wave caps crashing on you.
Even if you're looking back in the right direction, there's nothing you can see. But more voilent crashing waves. You and beacon can be separated by a quarter mile in matter of minutes.

Thanks for answering my question.

The answer in case anyone missed it,
Is we can't have sensible things like that in this country. Because there's no shortage of people answering questions they don't understand the importance of the answer people seek.

For every one person asking the right or smart questions, there's ten people giving dumb answers, then there's ten more to turn the question into something totally different.
I'm not upset at you IM but this is the biggest problem in our country. Communication.

Ironman says

and in 5000 miles of ocean, wouldn't a quarter mile away be a good spot for the search helicopters to start looking for you?

But since I'm already here...

If the person got a quarter mile away in less than a minute, then how far do you think they got some 24 hours later after the search and rescue effort got underway?

We have high res satellite technology where the satellite can take a photo of thousands of square miles then by zooming in on areas. A few people from a desk could cover more area than planes flying at low altitudes for a fraction of the cost.

It would be useful for land and sea rescues, I don't understand why we aren't using it.
Earlier Google Maps were high res enough. But Countries started privacy laws, and made them restrict when they refresh and they have to use a low res imagery now.
But based on the quality that even Google maps used to be, I know the technology exists today.

Tenpoundbass says

We have high res satellite technology where the satellite can take a photo of thousands of square miles then by zooming in on areas.

Xcept in a hurricane it's fucking guaranteed that the whole area will be under thick cloud layer.

Ironman says

Doesn't everything drift together in the ocean currents? Does a body drift faster/slower than other floating ship parts and debris?

No! If that was the case we should have found a few hundred skeletons and enough debris to reconstruct 90% of the fuselage of the downed Malaysian jet they found on Reunion Island.

As a wave picks you up, it starts lifting you and takes you off in another direction(Have you ever seen choppy seas?)
The swells aren't in even rows going in the same direction like it is on the Beach. The only reason all of the waves crest in the same direction at the beach is because there's the edge of the shore to break the waves. Out in the open seas, especially when the waves are being whipped up by a storm. The current is less of a factor than the wind blowing in one direction, then one wave swells and starts building in one direction, while the swell on the opposite side starts jetting out in the opposite direction, then there's many waves going in other directions. Once you've been picked up by one swell and carried away, you're then picked up by another, and carried in either in the same direction or slightly to the left or right of it. That is why debris is often found over an area of 1200 square miles the following hours and days.

Straw Man says

Xcept in a hurricane it's fucking guaranteed that the whole area will be under thick cloud layer.

'cept the next day when the sun comes out tomorrow.

The El Faro departed from Jacksonville, Florida on Sept. 29, when Joaquin was still a tropical storm, with 28 crew members from the United States and five from Poland. The ship was heading to Puerto Rico on a regular cargo supply run to the U.S. island territory when it ran into trouble. It was being battered by winds of more than 130 mph and waves of up to 30 feet (9 meters).

Run the Storm, about the loss of the El Faro. This is a very American story: a ship carrying goods from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico for Wal-Mart (including fructose in tanks to give them diabetes). The ship was owned by MBA types in Seattle, by people who had never done the job of a ship captain.

My theory on this is that people who have not done the job they are asking someone else to do are unable to tell if their employees are lying when they say they cannot do something. The way they deal with this is to just demand an outcome and then see what happens.

The type of person who is an employee (not entrepreneur) does not understand this tactic and desperately tries to do the impossible. So, under pressure to meet the schedule, the master of the El Faro sailed this forty year old rustbucket right into a hurricane and killed everyone on board when it sank…

In the context of the El Faro, the high agency person would lay down the law with the suits in Seattle and refuse to sail into a hurricane. (And also refuse to sail a rustbucket or work for shipowners who wouldn’t think to cannibalize a sister ship for parts before it is scrapped.) But the real work of avoiding a situation like that happens long beforehand. Many people are not able to refuse an illegal or dangerous order because they can not live below their means and build up a surplus that would sustain them while being in between jobs or making a transition to entrepreneurship.